


Want, Choice

by quigonejinn



Series: Heroes in the Sky [3]
Category: Firefly, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 05:26:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Yancy knows what they're going for; Raleigh has to have it explained to him.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is about a thirteen year old and a ten year old getting sent off to Companion school. It isn't a cute fic.

On the Central Planets, the skies are clear, the grass is green, and nobody lives in want. 

Mrs. Becket takes her boys down to the Madrassa screening when they are thirteen and ten respectively. 

...

On the Central Planets, the skies are clear, the grass is green, and nobody lives in want. There are jobs for everyone who wants to work. Anyone who is unable or unwilling receives a stipend and housing and food. Nobody starves to death; nobody lives in want. 

Now that she is on her own, Mrs. Becket is only qualified for an O-4 job. How will she feed and clothe and raise four mouths when three of which are growing and hungry? She can apply for grants and benefits; she swallows her pride and does so. She gets them. She takes whatever job she can get and works hard at it, in hopes of getting a raise and a promotion. 

But how much money does she make? How much money does Mr. Becket send? It shouldn't be consistently expected from a man who can walk out without a backwards glance at either his wife of fifteen years or his three children. In fact, the last time he comes back, his second son, who always thought he was his dad's favorite, wraps his arms around his dad's leg and begs and cries his heart out, and Mr. Becket calls his ex-wife to come help him get Raleigh off his leg. He leaves, and they can't afford to stay where they are. Subsidized housing places them in one of the blocks of gray industrial housing a two hour ride into the heart of the City, even by the high-speed train they can no longer afford: the children leave their private school with music and art classes and neat uniforms with red piping. Two times in three weeks, Raleigh comes home with a bloody nose that he is proud of, because he earned it fighting someone who made fun of Jazmine's government-supplied clothes. Yancy doesn't want to talk to her, and his grades plumment. What can she do to help? What will be waiting for them when they graduate from school at fourteen? 

Jobs in another cubicle factory like hers. A lifetime of insecurity and fear and having to submit one of their two tickets a day if they want to use the bathroom and hurrying back before their badge chimes. 

In short, less than they deserve. Survival on the charity of the government and others. 

Nobody lives in _want_ on the Central Planets. 

...

So at the end of nine months, after working sixty hours a week for not enough money to put food for four on the table in the absence of benefits, Mrs. Becket lays out her nicest remaining dress. She takes a sleepy Jazmine to a neighbor, then hauls the boys out of bed, shoves them into the shower, and gets them in their best clothes. They leave before dawn for the half-hour walk to the train station, then the five hour cheap train to the central downtown area with where the screening will be conducted. 

Yancy knows what they're going for; Raleigh has to have it explained to him.

...

Years later, Raleigh learns how to deal with clients who were taken to the screening at the Madrassa, but failed for one reason or another. He learns to convey a balanced message of pride in what the Madrassa has taught him, but also how much he missed his family, how he'll never have that time back again. Too little pride in the Madrassa, and client will be upset, because they feel as though they are overpaying for services that any whore provide. Too much pride and too little regret, and the client will be offended, because he or she or they did not make the cut. Too much regret, and the client will feel guilty and see Raleigh as a person, not a Companion. 

It's tricky work, not least because it needs to appear completely artless. 

Raleigh is good at it. Yancy is even better. 

...

The first round of Madrassa screening is personality testing and intelligence testing, both on a computer screen and in a group setting, answering questions in front of peers. The loudest don't always make it through; the quietest don't always make it through, either. 

For those who pass the first round of screening, there is medical testing, reflex and coordination and health screening and genetic analysis. Part of the medical involves pricking the finger for blood, then running that through a rapid-sequence analyzer that will come up with probable projections of the face and body of the screened person at twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, and beyond. Part of the test is seeing how youthful good looks or childhood gawkiness will age: Companions who want to frequently work until old age. Choosing people with long-lived good looks is a wise investment for the Guild. 

The other part of the test is the response of the child on seeing his or her face on the screen: adaptability is one element. Yancy looks, considers, and says with a casual teenage shrug and a slight, immensely charming smile at the tester, who is a good looking young man. 

Three years younger, Raleigh looks, blinks, and looks back at the tester, trying to figure out the appropriate response, but responding correctly when the tester engages in a series of pre-arranged subconscious cues, testing to see whether, when uncertain about what response is correct, Raleigh has native desire to please combined with the talent for reading strangers. 

Yancy is good at it. Raleigh is even better.

...

The room is large, and the rows and rows and rows of close-packed chairs are largely empty. There are only a few parents left at this point, most of whom are clustered down at the end, talking, being anxious, talking about how this is their child's second or third time through. How many more rounds will they try? What preparation course? Mrs. Becket isn't with them; she has her purse over her knees, held to her stomach, and the representative opens and closes a few applications on her tablet pad until the noises wake Mrs. Becket, who blinks, a little disoriented: Yancy gets his slow waking from her. 

The Madrassa representative says, quietly, that both of the boys have passed the first and second rounds. They're eligible to proceed to the second day. Does Mrs. Becket need to make any calls? Is she staying with family in the city? If not, they can arrange for a hotel room for both her and the boys, as well as a message to be sent to work, if she is scheduled to work, but wants to be there for the outcome. 

"Which one?" she asks, a little creakily, not entirely awake and mostly thinking about getting home to Jazmine. 

"Both of your sons, Mrs. Becket."

"Both of them?" she repeats. She thinks about Yancy, with his slow smiles, who is starting to look so much like his father that it hurts, and Raleigh, who still sometimes is afraid of thunderstorms. She hadn't been expecting both of them would make it to the second day. She didn't even think the odds were good that one of them would make it through the first round. These were Becket boys, after all. Good kids, but not star athletes. Not the head of the class. 

"Both of your sons. Remarkable, isn't it?" The woman smiles pleasantly. "Shall I make hotel arrangements for three? If you'd like dinner at the hotel, that will, of course, be handled by us." 

The hotel is high in one of the towers. There are two large beds; Yancy and Raleigh take the one closer to the window. Raleigh plays with the switch on the window, turning it opaque, then translucent, then opaque again. He says that the lights of the other towers look like stars, like when they used to go to other planets with Dad, and Yancy is busy fiddling with the room service ordering screen, excited about getting to order anything and everything he wants. They engage in some brotherly shoving over who gets what side of the bed. 

Mrs. Becket sits down heavily on her bed, not sure what to say. She knows she needs to call the neighbor and explain what happened, make sure that she can watch Jazmine for another night, but in the moment, all Mrs. Becket can think about is how much she wants to grab the boys and run and run and -- 

...

She doesn't, though. Who is she to hold her sons back? 

In the elevator down the next morning she has to wipe orange juice off Raleigh's mouth and brush toast crumbs off the front of Yancy's chest. They're all in the same clothes that they wore all day yesterday. She did what she could with the in-room press, but hanging her dress and the boys' jackets and trousers in the bathroom while they all showered didn't do much. 

Yancy's hair sticks up in the back; she tries to smooth it down with her hand. He pats her on the shoulder when the elevator opens in the hotel lobby, and two weeks later, when they've finished out the semester at their school, when they've had a chance to say goodbye -- the shuttle comes for them, touching down in the courtyard of their little concrete block estate, the symbol of the Londonium Madrassa on the sides. Yancy and Raleigh have a personal bag of effects each, but no clothes, no toiletries, nothing like that: they'll get entirely new ones at the Madrassa, and they'll be back one afternoon a month by the high speed train. They'll get an education better than what they'd get at the local comprehensive; Ma will get a stipend to replace the earnings that Yancy could be bringing with a part-time job, and when Raleigh turns thirteen and is eligible for a work permit, if he's still at the Madrassa, she'll get money from that too. Would they have offered to pay her that if she hadn't been an O-4 in a cubicle factory in an outer suburb? 

He'll watch out for Raleigh, Yancy says, when she lets go of him, even though she doesn't want to. 

Raleigh waves to her out of the shuttle window.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Raleigh remembers that seven months into the Madrassa, he and Yancy went home for the lunar New Year._

At one point after Niska, Raleigh is on the shuttle, smoothing the tension out of a client's shoulders. His hands are slick with oil; the lights are dimmed, and the air smells pleasantly, but not overwhelmingly, of an incense blend designed for relaxation. Sounding happy and content, the woman asks why he travels on the edge of civilized space when he could live, wealthy and happy, on a Central Planet. Does he like going from planet to planet and transit station to transit station? Her family actually owns the private transit station where they're docked, as well as most of the planet underneath, and Raleigh smiles and tells her that at the Madrassa where he was trained, they say a Companion only walks three times. 

"Three times?" she asks, sighing contentedly when Raleigh slides his hand under her hip and turns her onto her back. He arranges her so that she is lying on the edge of the bed, legs hanging over the side, but not too far off the ground. He doesn't want her to tense up again and undo all of his work, and Raleigh settles onto the floor and kisses the inside of her right knee. 

Three times, he says: once, walking through the doors of the Madrassa for the first time as a candidate, a second time walking from the candidate's table to the initiate's table, and a third time when presented as a member of the Guild. 

Raleigh smiles and kisses the inside of her left knee. 

_Everything else in a Companion's life is a choice_. 

He dips his mouth forward. 

...

Raleigh is on the main promenade of the transit station, arms full of unglamorous packages of replacement parts for Tendo and tools for Alison and things that Mako wants to use for the upgrades she is doing to the lighting system in the canteen: Mako herself is haggling like a fishwife with a vendor over a part she claims to want when she actually wants something on the other side of the shop, but Mako claims that this will allow her to drive down the price. Loudly, she accuses the man of trying to piss on her face and tell her it's rice wine, and Raleigh keeps himself from sighing, but lets his eyes slide to other places in the promenade. 

His client from the night before passes by, two bodyguards in front, another in the back. The bodyguards take him looking at their boss in stride -- an important woman on the station, after all, and with his arms full of packages like that, if he doesn't move, Raleigh isn't a threat. Raleigh also sees how, at first, her eyes slide right past him and Mako. He understands why. Mako is wearing a work jumpsuit, belted at the waist. Raleigh wears an old blue sweater and trousers and boots. Not exactly silk robes and earrings. 

When she gets close enough, though, she recognizes him. Her eyes go wide, and Raleigh smiles at her just enough so that it's friendly, then pretends to be drawn into some element of Mako haggling with the vendor, so that the client can look away without embarrassment. 

_Everything else is a choice_. 

...

Raleigh remembers that seven months into the Madrassa, he and Yancy went home for the lunar New Year. 

A month before, he and Yancy went down to the commissary to scope out gifts: they needed a plan, because the commissary didn't take credits, only points. Five points were awarded, for example, for first-class marks on a mid-term. Two points for second-class marks. Half-point for third-class marks. None for anything below, even though anything down to a fifth-class mark was technically passing. The Madrassa wanted candidates to excel, and Raleigh made a face when he saw what the point values were on the things that Yancy was looking at. Maybe they could -- 

"You think it's been easy for Ma, stuck doing everything while we're in here?" Yancy points to a scarf inside the case. "Let's get her that one." 

Would he have said that before seven months at the Madrassa? Before seven months at the Madrassa, would Raleigh have made a face, but spent his spare time for a week, sitting in front of a hand-mirror, practicing the gestures for pouring tea and serving tea and arranging tea-cups on a tray? He got a first-class mark, and by clubbing their points together, they had enough for the scarf and enough left over for a bag of candy and a hair clip with butterflies for Jazmine. The Madrassa sent gifts ahead of them, too: a bag of real oranges, all the way from Persephone, and Ma and Jaz hadn't had any since Dad left. A pretty red box of New Year rice cakes, dusted with real confectioner's sugar, plus a red envelope with the equivalent of an entire extra stipend payment, along with an actual hand-written note in ideograms, praising how hard the Becket boys had worked. 

Raleigh remembers, vividly, that he was happy he was back to be back home, eating Ma's cooking, being trailed after by Jaz, who seemed convinced they were going to disappear again if she took her eyes off them. Raleigh's memories of that first New Year trip back from the Madrassa are, in fact, deeply tied to the memory of learning how much he liked giving nice presents: how round Ma's eyes got, how her mouth fell open when she saw what was in the long, flat box that the commissary had wrapped for them. Yancy tied it on her; Jaz ran off, the butterfly on her new hairclip bouncing on its spring, and brought out a hand-mirror from the bathroom for Ma to see herself. 

...

Later, when the lights were off and the two of them were in their old bedroom in their old bunk beds, Yancy on the bottom because he never liked heights but refused to admit it, Raleigh in the top and looking up at the old, familiar glow in the dark stars on the ceiling -- stars and planets, arranged and rearranged so many times that the sticky backing had started to come off on some of them, so Raleigh had to tape them up. 

In the dark, Yancy said that he'd picked that scarf for Ma because it looked a lot like a scarf that she'd sold after Dad left.

"Sold? You mean those are worth something?" 

"What do you _think_ , kid?" 

...

Raleigh and Vanessa are sitting in his shuttle, smiling and talking. Raleigh makes some of his Poseidon-grown guanyin oolin, and Vanessa breathes deep before drinking. In return, she fills him on Madrassa gossip. Which house priestess isn't speaking to which other one, how Bellerophon is still campaigning to get its own Madrassa but is being blocked by an unusual point on which Ariel and Persephone see eye to eye. Raleigh laughs and puts a little more tea into her cup. 

Madrassas teach would-be companions to have fine tastes: high-grade silk, delicate oolong, fresh fruit, beautifully worked clothes and accessories. Clients expect Companions to go from the bedroom to the state dinner to admiring an ancient, priceless bronze from Earth-That-Was. Another part of it, too, is maintaining the image of Companions. A Companion has the sole decision of whether to accept a contract or not, and even if a contract is accepted, there is no guarantee of a trip to the bedroom. 

Still: the beautiful hotel rooms, the stipends paid to poor parents, training expensive tastes and comforts into ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen year old children, the translation of achievements at the Madrassa into beautiful, tangible items: everything has a price. 

_Everything is a choice._

...

Yancy, at thirteen, calling his younger brother _kid_ , proud to be earning and giving his mother some of what she lost when their father walked out. 

Yancy, at sixteen, walking straight-backed, head up, from the candidate tables to the initiate table. One day, the house priestess of Persephone is visiting, and the house priestess of Londonium takes her to see a practical that Yancy runs.

...

Raleigh, at eighteen, at his mother's funeral. He spent six years as a candidate, two years as an initiate: the end result is as refined and smooth and attentive and culturally sensitive as anything Londonium has ever produced. He won't embarrass the Madrassa on Sihnon or anywhere else on the Alliance, and he has skills not listed on his profile. He will, for example, be leaving the Madrassa with a nonspecified proficiency in music. It won't bring his profile to the attention of a professional musician or even a serious aficionado, but he can play the qin, and he can recite and sing. His voice is pleasant, well-trained; he can drink with a client at the table and sing him asleep afterwards. 

In the rain, with Yancy holding an umbrella over him, he sings their mother's favorite song. Afterward, Jaz cries on him for a while, and when he tells her that they'll be going off-planet soon now that they have their Guild licenses, so she'll be staying with Aunt -- Jaz shoves him away and says that their mother had three children, but in the end, only one of them was there to hold her hand when she died. 

...

The first year that Raleigh and Yancy are registered Companions, they do a number of jobs in tandem. Raleigh doesn't think twice about it, but Yancy does. He wants to keep an eye on his brother, and he talks to the appropriate people to make sure that any requests that mention an interest in hiring _brothers_ come to him first. After all, they went through the front door of the Madrassa together. Raleigh watched Yancy walk from the candidate table to the initiate tables; Yancy watched Raleigh make the same walk three years later. In the curtained area while waiting for their turn to step onto the floor for presentation to the Guild as Companions and their peers, Yancy sees the light from outside illuminate a stripe of his brother's face: Raleigh is made up more heavily than he is, but even through the paint, in the strip of illumination, even if he weren't a Companion, he could read the eagerness. The excitement. 

Raleigh talks Yancy into putting a portion of their earnings into a trust fund for Jaz's education and future use, but when was the last time they spoke to her? Who do Raleigh and Yancy have but each other? 

...

Years later, Raleigh wakes on _Jaeger_. He might have been dreaming of Knifehead Tower on Sihnon. His left shoulder and side ache, and Raleigh shifts, carefully, onto his back. He has had insomnia problems since Knifehead. He doesn't go back to sleep; instead, he settles Mako against his shoulder, listens to Chuck sigh in impatience in his sleep and swing his leg up, so it pins Raleigh a little more. 

Raleigh feels their bodies next to him and over him, and he imagines glowing constellations beyond the ceiling of his shuttle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea about Raleigh talking Yancy into still doing the trust fund is legit saellys's idea, as is the stuff about Yancy and Raleigh doing a lot of tandem work/Yancy doing some pre-screening in their first year because Yancy wants to keep an eye on Raleigh.


End file.
